How I filmed a MURDER in a Train-PODCAST

Welcome to my channel where I dive into the fascinating world of filmmaking!
This episode I am talking about the story behind the exciting and thrilling train sequence from 2007 film JOHNNY GADDAR.
 
A Mumbai based gang of five people was offered a drug consignment worth five crores by a corrupt police officer from Bangalore.
The stuff had to be picked up from Bangalore against a payment of 2.5 crores. It's a hundred percent profit venture.
 One of the members, Shiva, was entrusted with the job of transferring the money to Bangalore by train. The youngest member Vikram, decides to intercept this transfer and take the money by making Shiva unconscious using chloroform. The plan was successful till the unexpected ending where Shiva gets killed.

This was a scene happening in a cramped compartment of a fast moving train. There was no dialogue in the entire scene.
And it's night.
I had to think of an out of box cinematographic treatment to make the scene memorable.
Keep watching the story of concept development behind the exciting and thrilling train sequence from 2007 film JOHNNY GADDAR.

https://youtu.be/C_rca_dGJpw
Full video is available on Youtube.

Transcript

 HOW I FILMED A MURDER IN A TRAIN

A Mumbai based gang of five people was offered a drug consignment worth five crores by a corrupt police officer from Bangalore. The stuff had to be picked up from Bangalore against a payment of 2.5 crores. It's a hundred percent profit venture. One of the members, Shiva, was entrusted with the job of transferring the money to Bangalore by train. The youngest member Vikram decides to intercept this transfer and take the money by making Shiva unconscious using chloroform. The plan was successful till the unexpected ending where Shiva gets killed. This was a scene happening in a cramped compartment of a fast moving train. There was no dialogue in the entire scene. And it's night. I had to think of an out of box cinematographic treatment to make the scene memorable.

The story behind the exciting and thrilling train sequence from 2007 film JOHNNY GADDAR directed by Sriram Raghavan. The first question was, how do I bring the feeling of a fast moving train. The train is going from Mumbai to Bangalore. Outside the window it's just darkness. There's no moving landscape. Without a moving landscape through the window, how do you create the feeling of a fast moving train? How many days will we have to shoot on a train? It's expensive to hire a running train. Or,

should we make a SET?

These are the questions that bothered me for weeks while prepping for the thriller ’JOHNNY GADDAAR’ in 2005. Me and the direction team did many recce’s during this time. We travelled in trains many times to figure out the logistics of the shoot. But for many days I couldn't figure out the solutions to issues bothering my mind. I believe planning is a very very important aspect of filmmaking. If it's a big budget film, obviously we need lots of planning. If it's a small budget film, planning required, is even more, because that's the only way you can save money without making any compromises in the making of the film. Film budget should be done in a planned way. There should be specific allocations for  particular parts of the script, scene or a design. This should derive after detailed discussion with every concerned department so that you will come to know about the complexities involved in a scene. I think the lack of scientific disciplined planning in film making still plagues our film industry. This is manly because of a lack of film production education in India. There's no formal education in India for film production. Not just Film production, many departments don’t have formal education. Action, Choreography, Costume design, it's  different from fashion design, Make up, it's different from bridal make up or beauty make up etc. The film schools, barring very few, don't have a detailed Film production course in their curriculum. The management schools don't have Film production in their curriculum either. The elements of Film production vary drastically from other industrial productions. So the MBA holders from these management schools don't fit in a film production company. And moreover the Film Industry is still not considered as a ‘Respected Industry' or ‘Decent Job Avenue’ for most of the MBAs coming from reputed institutions. Most of the management team of a film production company reaches that position by climbing the ladder of film production in the industry. Throughout their career they were trained in reducing *expenditure*. So they bargain with every expenditure without understanding the importance of the expenditure. They were never trained in finding out the areas where they should spend money and where they should not.

This understanding should come from the knowledge about scripts, the way the film should be made, target audience, marketing possibilities, technological developments etc.   In short a production team should have a thorough understanding of the filmmaking process, both in art and business. and not just the expenditure process.

The lack of this knowledge affects the quality of most of the films.

The two main areas of concern were 1. How do I make the audience feel the movement of the train if it's not seen through the window?  is  there any other way? 2. What kind of cinematographic design I'll bring into a scene like this? When I start working on a  scene in a  film, I start thinking about what are the essential elements required for that scene. Here in this scene, the basic MOOD is suspense. So I need to bring cinematic elements which will highlight suspense and thrill. So every element of cinematography should be designed in such a way that they enhance this  MOOD. Over this time I had somewhat designed the look of the film. I had an idea about the colour scheme, composition and method of shooting. But I couldn't figure out what to do with the train scene. I wanted the scene to have a stylistic approach.

I was looking for an idea to start my design process. The recce trips reminded me of my film school days. While I was studying at FTII Pune, in the 80’s, every vacation I would travel to my home in Kerala and back to the film school. The journey used to be 36 hours long. Two consecutive nights in a train. When you reach the destination and try to sleep, you feel that the body is still moving as if it's in a train. It's a small game your brain plays with you. The brain makes a small programme to counter the movement of the train to reduce the discomfort of the continuous movement. This programme keeps working for some more time even after you get off the train. That's why you feel this hangover of movement. I wanted to bring this hangover as a style element in the scene. For that I have to create a rhythmic movement in the frame. Just by putting a camera in a compartment and shooting, I am not going to get this feel.  If I put the camera on a tripod, put it on the floor of a train and shoot a person sitting in front of it, you will not see this movement in the frame. It's because the camera is placed on the same floor as the person and all three, the camera, the actor, and the floor of the train are moving together. Here the camera is moving along with the person in sync, because both are connected to the same floor which is giving them the movement. . There's no relative movement difference. So, you will not perceive the movement in the frame. This is what bothered me for days,

How to get this movement in the frame.

The first hint of the solution came during one of the train journeys.

I was standing at one end of the compartment looking at the other compartment through the vestibule. Vestibule is the corridor connecting two compartments through a loose connector. The two compartments are free to move independently to a certain extent. When I was looking at the other compartment, I could see that compartment was shaking very vigorously. It was scary to the extent that you don't want to walk through the vestibule and cross over to the other compartment.

Why is my compartment steady compared to that one?

Both the compartments are running on the same rails.

I decided to cross over to that compartment. When I looked back at the one I was standing earlier, it surprised me. Now the one I stood earlier is moving violently compared to the one I was standing.

That was the first hint to my solution. I got my first design element for the scene. And that too a good one, MOVEMENT. Movement is relative. The Movement you perceive is relative displacement.

We feel the earth is static and the sun is moving around it. In reality, the earth is moving but we don't realise it. Movement is relative  displacement. I realised, both compartments are moving in the same manner. Out of the visual movement I see, half of the movement comes from the compartment where I am standing.

Which means,

If I incorporate the movement of the compartment, the X,Y,Z axis movement, into my camera's support system, I'll be able to get some amount of the train movement in my image.

Confused? I will explain it. Suppose, the compartment is Rock steady and the camera is making all the movements which the train would be making in all X,Y and Z axis, I'll still be able to recreate the train movement in my image. If I design a support system which can make minor movements in all three directions at the same time and put the camera on that system, I will be able to replicate the train movement in my frame.

This was a major breakthrough.

I realised MOVEMENT is my design solution.

Now how to do it?

Various options came to my mind

Me and my team started our discussions.

First one was shooting with the camera on my shoulder instead of using a tripod. It will give  me movement in my frame . but the movement will not be rhythmic. It will not be like a train movement. I was very clear that I need rhythmic movement to create the train hangover.

Then we thought of hanging the camera  on  ropes. This will give us movements in two directions, right-left and forward-backward. But the third direction, up and down, was not happening. That's when the idea of elastic bungee ropes came in. Cheap and best.  Hanging the camera on bungee ropes gave us movements in all three directions, X, Y and Z. Next step was making a rig to hang the camera. It’s a frame made of slotted angles and we hang the camera with the help of bungee cords. The bungee cords will create the feeling of a suspended camera, without a solid connection with the train body. I will be able to minimise the train movement affecting the camera. I  was trying to make a crude mechanism which mimics the brain programme. Me and my team visited the train again and took measurements of the corridor, space outside the toilet, space between the seats etc. We came up with the exact dimensions of a standing rig where we could hang the camera. My grip friend Bhaskar made this rig. We got a cheese plate also made where we could attach the base plate and load the camera on it. Now I can move the camera in all the three axis  manually by shaking the base plate. Irrespective of the movement of the train, I could create the train movement in the frame. 

We made one more contraption to shoot low angle frames. This was a low base with an extra plate mounted on multiple tension springs.

With these two rigs I could fix a camera anywhere in the train and replicate the movement of the train in my frame. I decided to add one more camera in my package. This camera was parked in the engine compartment to shoot the point of view of the train. There was no point in shooting a dark  landscape. So we decided to run the camera only when the train is passing through lit areas like a station. We knew the station lighting would be very weak. Not enough exposure. So we decided to run the camera at 12 frames per second. Later we realised that the idea definitely gave us better exposure, but it also gave us the feel of a fast running train. Many of these shots were edited together to create an exciting intro of the scene.

Finally we got a train to shoot the scene. Train means, an engine and few compartments. The train will run from Mumbai to Vadodara at night and will run back the next night. From Mumbai to Vadodara, the train doesn't cross any city. It just runs through empty dark barren landscapes and villages.

Very rarely the train passes some minor stations with very few lights lighting up the station.

The Mumbai-Vadodara train running time is just around six hours. That means we will get a total of twelve hours to shoot an action scene including lighting, setting, rehearsals and shoot. Well it was not a very big scene. So theoretically maybe it was possible.

But the reality was something else altogether.  Since it was an additional train and not in the main train schedule, it kept stopping at unscheduled stations for hours for other trains to pass. So the continuous running train periods we got were very few. Before we finish a shot the train would slow down and stop at some station. During one of those nights, during one of those  stops, while taking a walk through the corridor,  I noticed a rectangular plate fitted with four screws on the wall of the toilet. I stopped staring at the plate. I have to go into a flashback here.

One part of the scene was inside a **toilet.** You know the train toilets are very cramped. An actor and a camera cannot be in the toilet together at the same time. There's no space for that. This is 2005, before the arrival of digital cameras. I was using a 35mm Arri 435 camera which was bulky compared to today's small digital cameras. The only option was to shoot that scene with the toilet door open and putting the camera outside. Even if I manage to keep the open door out of my frame, the feel of privacy and the feel of the scene will be lost. Without making a set it was impossible to shoot this part. And we didn’t know how to handle it when we started the shoot. The plate fitted with four screws was intriguing. I went inside the toilet to see the other side of the plate. There’s another plate with four screws there also. I got our carpenter to remove the screws and the plates. SURPRISE! I got a peephole into the toilet. The opening was just enough to accommodate my camera's lens. The toilet space issue got resolved. In the scene, the character walks into the toilet and locks himself in. Now he waits for the train to start. Since there's no exterior reference, you don't get a visual cue of the exact movement of the train. The floating camera helped me to create the movement of the starting train. After the two nights of shooting, we realised we could only can half the scene.

Being a low budget film, our production refused to hire the train for another night. Hiring a running train is very expensive.

After a couple of months, the production gave us an offer. They said we can get a compartment parked in the station yard. Just one compartment. No engine and no movement. I jumped at the offer. Immediately accepted it. Because I knew I could make the train run on a screen without making the train run on rails.

The remaining half of the scene was shot in the yard. Today when I look at the scene, I can't figure out which portions are shot in the yard ans which portions are shot in the running train. They matched perfectly well.

The movement we created gave the scene an amazing energy. An excellent sound design and edit made it a memorable scene. The film was a sleeper hit and gained a cult status over time. I derive the basic elements of cinematography like lighting, composition, lensing etc from various sources. In this story I was trying to narrate to you how I devised MOVEMENT as a strong aspect to narrate a thrilling story.

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